Third option, buy your own scooter.
They’re essentially Razor scooters with electric motors.
We have just gotten e-scooters in Portland, three companies are involved–Bird, Lime and I think the third one is Skip? Anyway, according to their charter with the city, at least 30% of the scooters must be deployed in the eastern part of the city, which is underserved by public transit. The scooters get picked up every night by independent contractors who find them via GPS beacon, take them home, charge them, then return them to the streets pretty much wherever they like. So wherever the scooters end up, someone comes to fetch them and redistribute them every night.
Considering that some (at least 17 currently, according to this website: http://scootersintheriverpdx.com/) have ended up in the Willamette river and that’s considered to be an acceptable risk to the scooter companies, I really have a hard time imagining that they’re all that concerned that someone might be taking scooters to more advantageous positions before duly activating and using them. Scooters have been found up trees, wedged down manholes in the street, at the top of tall poles, in dumpsters, disassembled in homeless camps and other places that adversely affect their utility to the general public. If one scooter goes missing for a half hour but turns up unaffected somewhere else I don’t think it’s going to break the bank.
Dude, go ahead, use the fucking scooter. Rest of y’all need to apply at least four counterclockwise twists to your undergarments.
There are tons of these scooters in down town San Diego, Bird, Lime and just recently Razor. I have never heard an alarm going off from a scooter. I am downtown a lot on the weekends. There are tons and tons of people playing around with them and just getting on them and pushing them without using the app. Sometimes the scooter will flash red lights when people try and rid them without signing in. They don’t look like they roll well at all without paying.
I wouldsn’t worry at all about loading it into a car. The scooter’s business model is to exploit loopholes/apathy in regulations concerning leaving shit all over they place. You are performing a public service in making the side walks cleaner for pedestrians. Maybe at some juncture the laws will clarify the rights and duties of the scooter companies much like there are parking regulations for parking cars an the city streets. Businesses are now paying people to move the scooters that are blocking easy access for customers.
I don’t know why, but the above line struck me as incredibly funny.
Anyway, it sounds like the scooter companies need to expand their list of recharging contractors to include people in more neighborhoods. I’ll bet there’s a small number of such people who do the job for all the companies and they’re all in the same neighborhood. And while they have to drive all over town to do pick ups, they won’t do the same to distribute recharged scooters. So all the scooters in town start the day in basically the same place. That’s not the best way to operate.
It’s a freelance gig structure, and actually kind of fascinating. (And unworkable/unsustainable/unhealthy, IMHO.) Read about it here: Who Charges Those Electric Bird Scooters? - The Atlantic
Can I rent a hotel room but only pay from the time I actually go to bed?
There have been a few…glitches with the locator app for the charger collectors. One guy on r/Portland was pretty pissed off that a malfing scooter app was insisting there was a scooter in need of charging in his back yard–but there wasn’t. He was getting knocks on the door WAY too late for anyone to be bugging someone from chargers demanding he give up the scooter he didn’t have. I guess the deal is the longer the scooter is out of commission the more the scooter company coughs up to find it and charge it and by midnight that imaginary scooter was gonna pay off like a Vegas slot machine. Some of the collectors have been breaking into each other’s vehicles to grab scooters to hijack the bounty on them. It’s getting very Wild West out there in scooterville. The Portland subreddit is a treasure trove of hilarious scooter stories, I highly recommend looking it over.
And for the record, I have yet to see anyone riding a hire scooter while complying with all the laws regarding safe operation on the streets. Never once seen a helmet, bare feet are common, riding on the sidewalk is constant and riding the wrong way down the street appears to be de riguer. I don’t think we’ve had a fatality yet but there have been a few collisions. Does not really appear to have been a well thought out concept.
If a person stuffs a scooter in their car and hauls it around, at what point does it become theft? An hour? A day? A week?
Let’s not forget that the scooters are designed to be easily located. If an unsigned for scooter is found in someone’s car, is everything okay if the person claims they planned to sign in later?
I’d never heard of these guys before, so I looked up their website. It’s interesting that they think that Windsor is in Michigan.
I think the practical answer to OP’s question has been mentioned but not harped on. The scooters are GPS aware and an alarm will go off if they’re moved without being activated. If you throw it in the back of your SUV and drive off, you’ll have to tolerate an obnoxiously loud alarm going off the entire time. I’d assume the alarm stops when the movement stops, but honestly, is that something you want to deal with?
We have Lime bikes around here. Anytime someone picks up a bike and puts it in a vehicle, we will get 911 calls about it, and have to chase down these people. So far, most of the “thieves” have been Lime bike employee’s redistributing the bikes when several become clustered and aren’t being used.
I think contacting the company and asking them to put some in the area you are wanting would be the best choice. Companies are always looking for spots where they will be used as often as possible.
Another thing to consider. The OP throws the scooter into the car, gets in an accident during the drive. The car gets towed to a wrecking yard. Days, weeks, pass and eventually the car gets sold off. The new owner (a parts person, perhaps) finds the scooter and ???
So the scooter is unavailable to others, can’t be located since it’s inside a metal trunk, and ends up who knows where.
All without the OP having paid a cent, being on record as the last renter, etc.
The person responsible should take responsibility the entire time. Obvious but needs to made clear.
Yes, I was quite surprised by the “passion” generated by this topic. I now feel horrible about myself. : )
How many of our young college students and new to the workforce 20 somethings are imprisoned and/or clogging up our justice system because they chose to move a Bird Scooter? That is why I say LEGALIZE IT!!
I just got off the phone with the Bird Scooter people and here is the straight dope:
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The rep said that the scooters were not supposed to be transported by another vehicle, even if they are being paid for. This is includes personal cars and buses (which he says is a very common question). He said that this rule is there so that the scooters don’t end up far from the city center so that they would be difficult for the chargers to retrieve. He said that this is a problem that they are working on.
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When I told him where I live and I told him that the scooters were all concentrated just north of downtown with virtually none anywhere else, he said that he was aware of that (he knew my city fairly well). He explained that most of the users are coming from that area, so that it where they are concentrated (I forgot to ask if chargers are told to leave them there).
He said that there is a team of people who are are working with my city right now to have more distribution points throughout the city and working to decide where those points should be. -
Their automated directory had choices for “Law Enforcement” “Businesses who wanted Birds on their property” and “Businesses who no longer wanted Birds on their property.”
One of the reasons the distance is relevant is because you’re charged a mileage fee, which can be used by a lawyer to assess potential damages - “You took it 1,000 miles, X mileage fee = part of what you owe my client.”
Anyway, found this fascinating article in the SA Business Journal print edition (link is probably paywalled), which had this nifty little graphic:
In the article, it’s mentioned that there are 2,900 Lime scooters in the San Antonio area.
So… let’s run some numbers.
Rev from ride initiations: $121,346
Rev from mileage: $18,220
Total Revenue: $139,566
(Sounds like a lot, right?)
But… 2,900 scooters
$48/rev per scooter, per month
$1.60/rev per scooter-day
Avg ride distance: 1.001 miles (most rode for less than 1 mile, but 1 mile is the minimum charged)
The City of San Antonio charges Lime $500 per scooter just to have them here, and $10/half-year renewal fee ($20 annually, but the permits are for 6 months each).
$500 X 2,900 = $1,450,000 in initial permit fees and $58,000 in annual renewal fees.
$139,556 X 12 = $1,674,792 in estimated annualized revenues
Yes, it was November… but our average high that month was 78-degrees and the average temperature was 57, so it wasn’t cold, even by SA’s weak-assed standards.
I’m just saying that these people are losing fantastic amounts of money. I mean, if these things are expected to last 10 years, they’ll be OK* as long as they can handle those first-year losses (assuming everything stays the same, next year Lime will earn $1.6 million while paying the city just $58k). But if they have to replace the scooters every 3 years, they’re fucked.
Wonder how long it will hold out?
*I mean, I don’t have their financials so I can’t really say that they’ll be OK, but for this argument… they’ll be OK. 
Slashdot recently linked to this article about the lifetime and costs of a scooter.
It does not look good, although it seems the method used underestimated the lifetime a bit. But no matter how you crunch them this is a typical “Lose a ton of money and hope magic happens.” corporate strategy.
In addition one manufacturer’s scooters was found to have trivially rootable software via wide-open Bluetooth. You can install any firmware you want on it. In “theory” someone could walk up to a scooter, install firmware that turns off tracking and such, ride off with it or throw it in their truck and hey, free scooter.
That’s not going to be good for the bottom line, either.
Yeah, the scooter business model is frought with holes. Add the additional legal liability they will likely incur from people that hop on those things without helmets and end up in the ER with head injuries. And no, the simple disclaimer they put on the app, will not protect them in the long run from class action law suits.